After a two-year search, California’s oldest Episcopal Church now has a new rector, Nevada City native Seth Kellermann.

The Rev. Kellermann, 32, starts preaching Sunday at Grass Valley’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church downtown, kicking off the highest holiday of the Christian calendar: Palm Sunday and Holy Week, featuring a series of sermons leading up to Easter on April 12.

“This is kind of our big time,” he said.

It’s a big time for mainstream churches across the country, as they face the challenges of an aging demographic and struggle to attract younger people and busy families.

Kellermann said he’s up for the challenge, especially in light of a recession when many people are facing hard times and looking for hope.

His youthful age and roots in the community — both he and his wife Tara Kellermann graduated from Nevada Union High School in 1995 — will help.

“The church really wants to reach out to the community, especially young adults and young families,” Kellermann said.

“I feel like, if you have a message that engages people where they are, it is somewhat irresistible,” Kellermann said.

Kellermann grew up attending Trinity Episcopal Church in Nevada City every Sunday with his parents. But he gave up on the church when he was 13.

After a stint of rebellion, he reached a point of hopelessness. Though he had many friends, received good marks in school and was active in sports, he felt lost and a nagging emptiness.

“I didn’t have any purpose in my life. I didn’t have any direction,” Kellermann said.

When he was a junior in high school, his friend since second-grade, Tara, told him about Jesus and offered him hope, he said.

After high school, the two ventured to Virginia where they went to college. Kellermann studied English. The two married in Nevada County the summer before their senior year.

Soon after graduating, Kellermann enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a Ranger from 1999 to 2003, jumping out of airplanes and chasing terrorists. He served a three-month tour in Afghanistan as a machine-gun team leader in 2002.

While in the Army, the ministry call overcame him.

“People would come to talk to me about hard times in their life. There was ministry going on already, it just wasn’t official,” Kellermann said.

After leaving the Army, Kellermann began a three-year stint at a seminary in Pennsylvania.

“I was cooking once I was there. It was a really wonderful time,” he said.

He served three years as an assistant minister at a church in Dallas before moving back to Nevada County with his family a month ago.

This is the first time the younger Kellermanns have returned home for good in 13 years.

The couple and their four daughters are moving into the four-bedroom rectory, a Victorian house that shares a lush, green lawn with the wooden gothic church built in 1855.

Its an odd mirror-mission of his parents’ lives: He is the son of Dr. Scott and Carol Kellermann, a Nevada County couple who have been serving as missionaries in Uganda for the past eight years.

The younger Kellermann said he looks forward to growing the church’s Sunday collective of 140 members. He characterizes his style of ministering as conversational, using current events people can relate to, melding this casual approach with the traditional liturgy that older churchgoers expect.

“I think people are really looking for a church that doesn’t carry any pretense,” he said.

Kellermann’s mission is to reach out to those who do not belong to a church and are struggling during hard economic times.

“When everything falls apart around you, there is still hope. I’m betting my life on that,” he said.

Services are held at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. every Sunday at the church at 235 S. Church St. An Easter egg hunt will be held on the church lawn following Easter Sunday services.

To contact Staff Writer Laura Brown, call 477-4231 or e-mail lbrown@theunion.com.